Ben Tre Specialities

Ben Tre Province is famous for coconut candy. Almost everywhere in the region is bounded by limitless coconut trees from Bao and Minh to An Hoa islets. From coconut trees, coconut fruits and coconut water, locals make many foods and products, of which coconut candy is the most famous.

Ben Tre has long rivers with fresh water

There is a famous candy at Mo Cay market

Mo Cay candy is scented and fatty

Mo Cay girls is both skillful and docile.

Coconut Candy

Ben Tre coconut candy is a food speciality and a traditional handicraft manifesting the country’s culture. Ben Tre coconut candy is originated in Mo Cay. The raw materials for producing coconut candy are coconut juice, malt, sugar (now people use refined sugar but before they often used bottled sugar). The malt is filtered from the glutinous rice nourished to sprout shoot. Mo Cay candy officially has its brand name Ben Tre coconut candy since 1999 and has been exported to many countries in the world. Now international tourists know delicious dishes in Vietnam not only through bowls of noodle soup with fume, nice finical luxurious dishes from Hue imperial palace but also remember common simple but sweet coconut candies which were eaten once and become unforgettable.

Coconut Duong

Coconut duong is grilled on coal fire by using two bars of bamboo or small bamboo which are splitted to make a clamp. Clamping alive duongs and put them on slight coal fire and turn the clamp around until duongs become well-done and crispy. Pick them out of the clamp and put them on plates. Prepare fish sauce with tamarind (by inserting tamarind in the coal fire for being well-done and then press it in a bowl of Phu Quoc fish sauce and add pimento, sugar and sodium glutamate to the fish sauce for deliciousness).

Grilled duongs should be eaten with salad, cai troi, cang cua, cai xanh, basil, perrila, pimento. Use our hands to pick coconut duongs and place them on vegetables and roll them and then dip in the mixture of fish sauce and sour tamarind. Biting the roll and chew it leisurely and enjoy all the flavours such as strong smell and sweet taste of vegetables, scented and fatty tastes of duongs. Adhering to the sour taste of fish sauce with tamarind is the hot pungent flavour of pimento. Though the flavour is common but game delicacy and sea food could not be compared with it. Besides people steep duongs in fish sauce and roll them in flour and then have them fried and eat them with salad, tomato. Duongs are cooked with coconut juice gruel. This dish tastes good. Duongs can be processed to make other dishes which are all scented and fatty.

Green-skin pomelo (green skin but red inside)

Section of pomelo has red color. Peel its skin and hold the inside by hands without being sticky. It is not mentholated but has a sweet taste adhered to not such a sour taste as other pomeloes and has no seeds. Restaurants often use green-skin pomelo to make goi (a dish of grilled fish and vegetables). Separate each part of a pomelo section with a little finger. Grilled trichogaster pectoralis meat is splited into smaller parts and its bone is eliminated. Put pomelo into a plate and mix the pomelo with a spoon of good fish sauce. Then add separated trichogaster pectoralis meat to the plate and after that spread chopped persicaria on the top surface; or boiled half fat and half lean pork is sliced; or boiled shrimps with its shells peeled are splitted half and mix with the pomelo which is already mixed with fish sauce and spread ground roasted peanuts over the top surface of the plate. So it’s the meal with a delicious dish of green-skin pomelo with something. Especially young green-skin pomelo or mature one or the one that is kept for many days can maintain its green skin.